Heroin metaphor – emotional and wrong. Because of our demographics (too many old people not enough offspring) without immigration labour shortages increase the cost of labour which cranks inflation. Asides the financial cost many manual low skill positions can’t be filled without immigrant labour as the local workforce feel these jobs are below them.

You can’t replace an educated boomer (regardless of their skin colour – as you seem to imply only white people are educated) with someone who doesn’t have the necessary skills. No one would advocate any different, but there are plenty of low skill positions that add value to the community and the economy. Legal immigrants who work in these sectors are a plus to any country – they contribute just as much as US born employee.

“Most whites don’t need nannies or lawn sprayers” – again your use of “whites” is annoying and betrays your belief that the US is a white country, where whites should get priority over other ethnic groups. Wake up man! It’s 2006.

And who the hell are you to decide what domestic staff people choose to employ? So long as they employ people legally it’s none of your god damn business you interfering fascist.

29pc of prison inmates are illegal aliens. That’s a whopper. The last data showed that the highest figure for illegal aliens incarcerated was in California where they made up 17% of the prison population. This is still massively high as illegal aliens make up only 3% of the population (as far as we know – of course we’ll never know) in California.

That in itself is a big argument for legalising these people. Legal citizens can be monitored. Get them working, contributing to the economy. Encourage them to become property owners – the biggest crime deterrent there is. By socially excluding these people (which is basically what you’re advocating) they are more likely to resort to crime and the black economy – no wonder they end up in prison, where they a certainly a net loss to society. In fact keeping them in jail is more daft than having immigrants on welfare.

]]>By: Millard Foolmorehttp://www.samizdata.net/2006/04/a-little-bit-le/#comment-111700
Sun, 09 Apr 2006 17:31:03 +0000http://192.168.200.139/?p=8803#comment-11170029pc of US prison inmates are illegal aliens. They’re not inside for that, but for what they’ve done since invading.

Hotspur: “The plain economics of the situation 2006 is that the more developed nations require mass immigration in order to maintain growth.”

Tell that to the Japanese. You don’t maintain growth by ‘replacing’ retiring educated white Boomers with Mexican Indians who can’t and often won’t speak English.

Immigration as a panacea for economic slowdown is like mainlining heroin to cheer yourself up. The incomer beckons to his brood and in total they cost more in welfare over his sojourn than they inject into the economy. Next to oil, dollar remittances are Mexico’s second highest category of import earner. Vicente Fox has his nerve lecturing America about open borders while fortifying his own to stop incursions by other Central Americans.

Besides, most white people would glady trade GDP growth (which seems to stick to the rich’s fingers more and more) for social tranquility. Most whites don’t need nannies or lawn sprayers either. A lot of blue collar guys sure need the jobs that are being outsourced overseas or stolen by immigrants who work for pennies.

90pc of Americans oppose amnesties for lawbreakers and their freeloading relations, and that was why even the bought and cowardly Senate had to give El Presidente Jorge notice to drop it. On top of the mounting disillusionment with the war, this issue is the dealbreaker between Bush II and his heartland GOP constituency. The MSM did such a good job of keeping La Raza off the radar that the big rally in LA was the first time Flyover Country grasped what it’s up against: armies of disaffected Mexicans who think the South West belongs to them.

]]>By: Henry Hotspurhttp://www.samizdata.net/2006/04/a-little-bit-le/#comment-111699
Sun, 09 Apr 2006 15:52:45 +0000http://192.168.200.139/?p=8803#comment-111699I got round to reading Hardin’s pamphlet. By trying to phrase everything as a metaphor his argument lacks the credibility of the realistic situation. “Imagine the rich countries are a lifeboat” – do me a favour! Or “sometimes liberals mix up the spaceship metaphor with the lifeboat metaphor” – trust me there is only one person mixing metaphors here – and doesn’t it make Mr Hardin sound ridiculous.

It is basically a non academic, emotional rant (words like swamped / drowning / sunk) dressed up with non evidence based pseudo statistics and a liberal dose of scaremongering. The generalisations about the populations of certain countries are truly ignorant and xenophobic.

The plain economics of the situation 2006 is that the more developed nations require mass immigration in order to maintain growth. Letting people into the ‘lifeboat’ is not the issue – ‘sinking’ is not the danger – not having sufficient willing workforce to ‘row’ (i’m sorry) is the problem.

The thing that pisses everyone off to the point they feel so desperate they go prowling with a shotgun (STOP IT – you are as barking as the dopey environmental lobby who think the end is nigh) is that the whole system is a mess.

This is because politicians are too afraid to openly admit we need immigrants, which is stopping them from getting to the important, more practical question of the criteria for entry.

Potential immigrants are going to wait for politiciansd to sort out the problem – they are going to get on with it and try and improve their lives.

Once they arrive my above point stands – legalisation is the only pragmatic approach.

]]>By: Robert Speirshttp://www.samizdata.net/2006/04/a-little-bit-le/#comment-111698
Sun, 09 Apr 2006 02:10:51 +0000http://192.168.200.139/?p=8803#comment-111698AFAIK, the Minutemen have never fired a shot at anyone on the US/Mexican border. Mexican drug smugglers, coyotes and even Mexican army patrols have. Isn’t it a bit better to congratulate those who show their commitment to the rule of law by going through the legal steps to get into the USA than to gush about the adventurousness and pluck of those who break the law? And, as Verity points out, the Mexican economy is not as bad as everyone thinks. And it’s getting much better. The illegals come to the US to get free services and easy money. How is that admirable?
]]>By: M. Simonhttp://www.samizdata.net/2006/04/a-little-bit-le/#comment-111697
Sat, 08 Apr 2006 19:24:13 +0000http://192.168.200.139/?p=8803#comment-111697Genetics is not a blueprint. It is more a set of guidelines.

How the body and brain develop is greatly influenced by environment. Pre-bith as well as post birth.

Smoke the right amount of pot and the body creates new brain cells as a result. The adaptation is continuous.

It is a fact that the children of immigrants are being taught the American Constitution. Which in my opinion is a good idea.

In fact I’d make knowledge of the American Constitution a requirement for work visas and even regular visitors.

Put them on the road to citizenship before they even cross the border.

]]>By: James Watertonhttp://www.samizdata.net/2006/04/a-little-bit-le/#comment-111695
Sat, 08 Apr 2006 14:43:34 +0000http://192.168.200.139/?p=8803#comment-111695Yes. I’ve noted it before – surely O’Halloran has better things to do with his time.
]]>By: Johnathan Pearcehttp://www.samizdata.net/2006/04/a-little-bit-le/#comment-111694
Sat, 08 Apr 2006 13:15:02 +0000http://192.168.200.139/?p=8803#comment-111694The whole ambiance of this site is ahistorical, uncultured and unscholarly– another aspect of its permanent adolescence. Overgrown teen boys don’t go in for the hard slog of reading, and they do lack the sense of how the past governs the present whch comes with the enforced wisdom of parenthood.

Patronising claptrap. I very much doubt you have a clue as to my reading habits or the level of erudition of people who write here. Sneering is not an argument.

]]>By: Johnathan Pearcehttp://www.samizdata.net/2006/04/a-little-bit-le/#comment-111693
Sat, 08 Apr 2006 12:25:28 +0000http://192.168.200.139/?p=8803#comment-111693Matt, where have I denied the existence of genetic, climatic, environmental, cultural, economic or other influences on how human beings think and behave? Where? Pretty much any great liberal thinker around would fully accept those influences, but — and this is the crucial bit — deny that these things completely undermine the notion that people are able to act consciously and take decisions based on their own free will. That is the point that needs to be driven home.

Take genetics. It is a fascinating subject, but I utterly dispute the idea that somehow the understanding of our genetic makeup means we are predestined, as the Calvinists used to think, to live a certain way. Knowledge is power, and the more we know about the world and our place in it, the more we can shape our own lives as we want. So greater knowledge can be liberating.

Edmund Burke was one of the greatest denouncers of the abuse of government power in history, and I very much doubt he would have had a lot of time for people using science for oppressive ends.

Uain, use the comments properly please. Making a point 4 times does not make it more credible.

]]>By: Matt O'Halloranhttp://www.samizdata.net/2006/04/a-little-bit-le/#comment-111692
Sat, 08 Apr 2006 10:20:44 +0000http://192.168.200.139/?p=8803#comment-111692“prosecuting an argument by saying ‘read this book, stupid’ is going to earn you very little credibility around these parts.”

That I CAN believe. Libboes are frozen in a 1950s mindset, theorising in a vacuum about the sort of hard realities Uain reports about above. Very little has disturbed their cherished principles since ‘Atlas Shrugged’ came out.

Pearce gives no indication amid his multifarious ruderies of ever having read a serious book all the way through. Nor does Pope Perry. They tout ‘The Open Society’ on their front page, but Popper was a social democrat and believer in ‘piecemeal social engineering’ by the State. Burke was praised here the other day, but he would have found the libboes’ attempt to float free of Man’s natural limitations most objectionable.

The whole ambiance of this site is ahistorical, uncultured and unscholarly– another aspect of its permanent adolescence. Overgrown teen boys don’t go in for the hard slog of reading, and they do lack the sense of how the past governs the present whch comes with the enforced wisdom of parenthood. All they care about is crying up windy abstractions such as the Individual and the Marketplace: rationalising a wish to do whatever they like without being trammelled by big bad biology or tradition or society, picking and choosing their loyalties in a deracinated ‘metacontext’.

This approach to politics is guaranteed to fail. Like all reductiones ad absurdum, libertarianism is for impotent, sidelined grousers.

]]>By: James Watertonhttp://www.samizdata.net/2006/04/a-little-bit-le/#comment-111691
Sat, 08 Apr 2006 07:40:58 +0000http://192.168.200.139/?p=8803#comment-111691Yes, Eurostat – despite your constant moaning about the perceived lack of intellectual acuity of some Samizdatistas and members of the commentariat – as well as the bizarre, pathological dislike of Johnathan Pearce you seem to have acquired – prosecuting an argument by saying “read this book, stupid” is going to earn you very little credibility around these parts. Can you please attempt to post a cogent rationale and stop wasting our time and Perry’s bandwidth? Thanks.
]]>By: Uainhttp://www.samizdata.net/2006/04/a-little-bit-le/#comment-111690
Sat, 08 Apr 2006 03:35:54 +0000http://192.168.200.139/?p=8803#comment-111690Sorry about that … problems witht the web.
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